Return
by Shadow-reflection-s
Summary: Cain is sent out to fin the mysterious Aris, of the Queen's old court. But things go...just a little wrong. And they end-up on the war path. Quite a few OCs.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Tinman or any of it's characters and I don't gain any profit from the writing of this fanfiction but I do own Aris and friends (can't name them yet because that might spoil stuff)

"I'm looking for Aris." The man's face was obscured by the wide brimmed hat he wore. "What make you think I know where she'd be?" the hooker leaned against her corner, her hands defensively on her hips. The man chuckled darkly. "Who said Aris was a _she_?" He lifted his head so the girl could see his face. His pale blue eyes flashed in the gas lamps' light. A metallic click made the hooker's gaze flick down to the man's hip. His coat had fallen open slightly, to reveal the barrel of a gun, she could see his finger resting on the trigger. She visibly paled. "Aris." The man prompted. The girl kept her eyes following the gun, "Long-coat?" The man spat hatefully on the ground, "Tinman then. Good, she hates long-coats." The girls breathing had become almost erratically as she continued. "Another thing she don't like? _Those who dream of things that can never be._" The girl nodded toward a shadowed doorway. "You'll find what you're looking for in there. But a word of advice? _Don't trust anything. Not even yourself._" The man smiled coldly at the girl, while his finger pressed down on the trigger. The girl squeezed her eyes closed against the imminent pain. There was a dull click. Of metal-on-metal. "Well. Would you look at that?" The man said as he stepped toward the doorway the girl had indicated. "I'm all out of bullets." The girl could hear the smile in his voice even without opening her eyes, which had filled with terrified tears.

The man trod, as stealthily as he could, down the tunnel that the doorway led to. He had re-loaded his gun before even opening the door and still clenched it tight in his hand. He had been ready for an ambush, and was almost starting to get worried when one didn't come. The gas lamps flared and dimmed as he passed them. Something brushed his arm. He span on the spot. Arm out, gun clenched like an extension to his hand. A small women stood before him. She peered short-sightedly up at him, her hand snapped out and slapped his hand. Hard. So hard he dropped the gun, which she snatched out of the air. "You'll not need that, lovie." He lunged at the women, swung back his arm and clenched his hand into a fist. But the woman dodged his attack and countered with one of her own. Her heel slammed into his crotch. It hadn't been one of his best ideas to forgo wearing his cod-piece. The woman giggled as he slumped to the ground, hands clasped protectively around himself. "I'm surprised!" She told his huddled figure "I thought long-coats always wore black!" The man tried to grunt out a retort, but she kicked him in the side, winding him, and silencing him. "Why have you come here?" She growled at him. He rolled himself into a protective ball before attempting an answer. "I came to find Aris." He wheezed. He was lifted up, still bent double with pain, he was able to look at her, even if his eyes were watering. "Now why are you looking for Aris?" The woman cocked her head slightly. "She's no threat to Azcadellia." She kicked him again "Tell me why you're here!" The man closed his eyes to the impending darkness and allowed himself to black out. He was still conscious to hear the woman as she realised he was no-good to her "Damn!"

He opened his eyes to a gaze blinkingly up at a beautiful young woman. "Who're you?" he asked haltingly, she shushed him and lay a cool hand gently against his lips. "What do you dream of, man?" She asked in a voice that reminded him of a trap he and his fellows had once befallen. She spoke with a smoothness that made his eyelids droop. "What do you dream? Son-of-man." Incense hung heavily in the air, almost smothering in its potency. "Tell me your wildest desire." She cooed, the soft security of the pillows he lay on made him drowsy, he wanted to palpitate this beautiful woman. He wanted her not to worry about him, he didn't deserve her pity. He wanted to open his mouth and for his life story to gush from his lips, wanted her to know everything about him. "Tell me." She whispered into his ear, blowing gently. He moaned his eyes going in and out of focus, "Adora." He groaned, "Adora." He told the girl in his grating voice, so course and broken against hers of free flowing honey. She smiled. He closed his eyes and breathed the incense in deeply. When he opened his eyes he was looking at his wife. "Adora!" he gasped, her sweet tanned face broke into her loving smile, the one that had won the distant tinman's heart. "Adora," he whimpered stroking her face "_My_ lovely Adora." She kissed his cheek, and he breathed in the smell of her hair, the sweet honeysuckle that was her favourite flower. He gazed wonderingly into her eyes, those endless brown orbs, with their spark of green deep into them. "I love you" she told him. He sighed with pleasure, the last time he had heard that voice other than in his dreams was when she had been screaming for her life, and the lives of her son and husband. "I missed you so much." She whispered into his ear. "I thought you were dead." His eyes snapped open. No, his Adora knew he wasn't dead. This wasn't the woman he had loved, wasn't the woman who had bore his son, wasn't the woman he had once, long ago, promised himself to. And hadn't that hooker said Aris didn't like people with impossible dreams and that he couldn't even trust himself, or his _eyes_. He whipped around and drew his gun. He pushed the barrel against the neck of the woman lounging beside him. She stared at him, those perfect brown eyes filled with terror. "My darling! What? What are you doing?!" She begged. He closed his eyes and pulled back his finger on the trigger. There was a bang, but not the sound of a gun. His eyes swarmed with colours and shapes and half formed memories. "A man who chooses to shoot his dead wife." Purred a female voice. "Aris will like you." And he felt scratchy cloth being brought down over his head. "No!" He wanted to say "I won't let you do this to me!" But he couldn't open his mouth, and the colours filled his field of vision. "I don't want to…" The incense drowned him in its cloying sweetness. One last thought captured him before he passed out again; she uses mists. _She uses Azcadellia's mists._

He woke up in a darkened room. He felt suffocated and his mouth was dry and foul tasting. "Well well." A light blossomed and grew to illuminate the middle of the room. "Our little sleeping hansom has awakened." The smooth voice roused him slightly more gently that the light. He blinked away the stars that had been born from the light. He felt a gag being carefully removed from his mouth, when the skin touched him; he felt a silky smoothness and smelt a slight sent of lilies and something he didn't know. "I hear you've been looking for me." A girl's pail face smiled down at him kindly. Her blond brown hair was drawn back tightly into a ponytail and her grey eyes watched him intelligently. Several people stood hidden by the shadows cast by the light. He groaned and closed his eyes. "You're Wyatt Cain?" The question was sharp and came from one of the "shadowy characters" Cain tried to find the speaker in the gloom. He gave-up with a sigh and nodded. "I'm Cain." His voice was cracky and didn't sound like his own. "You're a tinman?" The question again came from the shadows, but from a different direction. Cain nodded, talking hurt. "Why are you here?" The girl knelt down to look him in the eyes. He was tied to a wooden chair, usual interrogation style. "You're Aris?" He asked, his voice broke slightly and he started coughing. The girl reached for something, Cain was ready to flinch away but she brought a cup to his lips. He sniffed suspiciously at it. "It's only water." She told him smiling at his mistrust, her voice was quiet "I'm not going to kill you just yet. I want to know what a tinman is doing looking for me." She brushed away her fringe from her eyes "Your kind, Mr Cain, are quite rare. I'm sure the long-coats would love to receive a tinman as a present." She laughed quietly. He took and experimental sip of the drink, when he was sure it was just water, he guzzled it down greedily. Aris calmly reached to bring him another drink. But she withheld it from his lips. "And to your question, yes. I'm Aris." She allowed him to drink from the cup. Cain's eyes darted around the room at the figures that surrounded the two. "These are my friends. I trust them with my life. They will not harm you." After a pointed look into one corned, that seemed to make someone squirm, she continued "Any further." Aris lowered the light from Cain's eyes. He blinked away the brightness and looked around himself.


	2. Chapter 2

The room had no windows. Which made him think underground. There were only four other people apart from Cain and Aris; in one corner the woman that had beaten him in the tunnel. In another, a tall dark man, who wore a cloth over his eyes and carried a staff. A pale young woman that held a satchel in a white knuckled grip, and stared wide eyed at him teetering on the edge of a lunatic he thought. And he saw the woman who had posed as his wife close behind him. It appeared to be her who had been handing Aris the water. And Cain scrutinised each of them warily. They each could have passed as normal under-grounders. The man: a blind beggar, the small woman: could possibly be a performer in some circus, the younger pale girl: a mist addled wanderer. And the darkly tanned woman could have been just another pretty prostitute. Aris wore rags; but looked like she had fallen from riches. She was the type of person people sold to the long-coats as a fleer of Azcadellia's rule, which officially she was Cain thought. "I was sent by Lavender." Aris scrutinised him carefully, watching his face for any flicker of a lie. She looked to those standing behind and beside her. "Lavender fell to her daughter many years ago. She hasn't been seen in a long time." She told him. Cain gave her a half-smile, he had met many people who did not know Azcadellia had been over thrown; many still feared the disbanded long-coats. He had spoken to many unwanted' in his search for Aris; they didn't go top-side very often and hadn't heard the great news. "She's back." He told her simply. Aris looked at him sceptically. "DG came back." Her eyes flashed with a shocked recognisation. He knew about DG being alive. He knew she had been smuggled out of the O.Z. how could he know that unless it was true. "She asked for you to return to the position you once held." He looked her up and down. She was young, hardly more than a teen. But she had been one of the most prominent persons on her majesty's staff. That was all he knew about her. Young and important. "She asks that you accompany me back to the palace, where you could discuss your terms." The girl's eye brows rose as he went through what he had been asked to say. "That sounded scripted." She said dumbly.

"It was." She broke into a smile.

"Sounds just like […] to give a messenger a perfected script of what to say, and how," She nodded, "I'll follow you tinman." She told him finally. "But my friends come too. I'm not stupid enough to follow blindly alone into a possible trap."

They had ridden solidly for three days. Both horses and riders were exhausted. "There are still defectors in the woods." Cain told the troop, "They prey on anyone who stops to rest. When we get to resistance territory, we can sleep easy." They rode silently. Aris rode by the small woman and the girl who, as yet, had not spoken to him. The tanned women rode behind them, bringing up the rear. The blind-folded man rode close to Cain. He never removed the cover from his eyes and looked oddly like an ex-tinman, or some other type of law enforcer. Aris had covered her face and body in ill-fitting clothes, she hadn't spoken to Cain after their first meeting in the underground interrogation room and instead spoke through the small woman, Cain had since learned the name of; Marley.

A hooded, bent double figure stumbled out of the hedgerow along the side of the forest path they were following. "This way my friends!" Called the figure, "Come and rest your weary heads. We shall protect you." Aris halted her mount and her fellows followed suit, but Cain urged his steed towards the hunchback. When his horse was close enough, Cain nudged the figure with the toe of his boot. "Cut it out Jeb I don't need your bad acting, I'm too tired." The figure pushed back his hood to reveal a grinning youth. "This is how we first met again though, and it's my favourite act." Cain's face broke into a tired smile as he swung his leg down from the horse to greet the young man. They embraced like old friends, clapping each other on the back, telling each other how bad each of them looked. People stalked out of the undergrowth close to the still mounted group, the man's horse reared away when someone got too close. Marley's hand slipped inside her jerkin, to where Cain knew she carried a pistol. "Relax!" He called over to them, he led the boy, arm draped casually across his shoulder, the boy mimicking his gesture of companionship. "This," Cain indicated the youth "Is my son, Jeb. And these," he swept his free arm about the small clearing "are the resistance fighters." The mounted group didn't relax but they nodded to the people on the ground that surrounded them. "So." Jeb asked "Who are these?"

"Aris, and her band of renegades." Aris told him in a gruff voice, she hadn't removed her cowl and Cain got the feeling she didn't trust the fighters. Jeb straightened, as did many of the others filling the clearing. "Aris." Jeb whispered in an awed voice. "The great warrior Aris? Aris who led the queen's army? _The_ Aris?" Cain looked down slightly at his son; who's eyes shone with a respect he had never once before seen. The boy knelt at the feet of the horse. "Aris has been a beacon of hope to all of those who send-up the blue smoke." The mounted group looked from one to the other. Marley shrugged, the man nodded and so Aris dis-mounted and pushed back her hood slowly. "I'm no good at being admired boy," she reached down, took him by the elbow and hauled him up to a stand. "I much prefer being seen as an equal, less likely to have to keep up to expectations then." Aris smiled, but Cain, who had seen her truly smile saw that it was slightly strained. She hadn't expected people to see her as a figure head. "Come," Jeb said finally, "Our camp awaits, and so do your beds. You look like you need them." This final jibe was aimed at his father, who cuffed him around the back of his head.

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	3. Chapter 3

"Your son doesn't look much like you." Marley told Cain, she looked over at the boy who was talking animatedly with Aris across the room from them; Aris didn't seem to be enjoying her self half as much as Jeb though. "He has allot of his mother in him." Cain said bluntly. "Feels more like 'is fat'er tho'." Said a deep hard to place voice. Cain looked up to see the dark skinned man. "What do you mean by that?" Cain asked. "'E got 'is fat'er's temper, 'nd righteous soul. 'E yearns fo' justice." The man lowered himself slowly to the floor. "Vision," He told Cain, extending a hand "No 'fence wit' da' silen' 'reatment, mon. But Aris, say she no' sure we could trus' ya'." Was once a tinman, mon." Vision told him "But lost me' eyes, so's no ones want old vision. But Aris found me' 'nd help me to see agai'." "She sort of rescued all of us." Marley leant back with a sigh of pleasure. Cain looked over at the two women he hadn't met yet. "What are their stories?" He asked. Marley opened a single eye to look where Cain was indicating. "Them two?" Cain nodded "The young one's Boom-Boom. Least, that's what we call her. Good with explosives." Cain eyed the bag the girl, Boom-Boom always carried, held closed to her chest, knuckles white where she gripped the bag's strap. "Other's Sali" Vision said, his voice low. "Was a prostitute," Marley took over in her cool, southern accent "Learned how to make and use the _mists_. Uses them to discover someone's dream, then kills them when their so far under they'll never come out." Cain watched the two women sitting close together, Sali doing all the talking and flicking back her silver white head of hair with a practiced flick of the head. Aris crouched down behind Vision and tapped out a rhythm onto his shoulder, his head turned in an attempt to almost listen; his concentration was so held by her tapping. Cain frowned and looked round at Marley, for an answer to his question. But she shushed him with a hand, while she was frowning at the touches Aris made. She nodded with a cool regard when her leader was finished. "I unders'and my fiend." He told her in his gruff accented voice. He dragged toward him a load of sacking; for which the resistance had offered as bedding (Jeb had also offered Aris his own room, but she had declined gracefully to rest close to her warriors.) Marley lay down close to where Vision was clumping together the sacking. Aris went over and spoke almost silently to Sali, who had to lean in to hear her. "What's going on?" He asked Marley, who was curling up into a tight ball.

"Now?" She asked, "Now we sleep." She yawned openly. Cain looked over at Jeb; he sat leaning against the wooden planks that made up the wall, he caught his son's eye and frowned in confusion. Jeb shrugged. Cain heaved himself to his feet and moved to slump down by his son. "What's going on?" Jeb's eyes trailed Aris's path around her friends, Cain dug his elbow into the young mans ribs, earning himself a kick to the shin. "They trust you more than me." He said quietly to his father.

"I wouldn't say they trust me."

"They still talk to you."

"You were talking to Aris."

"Yeah, but she didn't say much more than grunts. I was the one doing all the talking." Cain chuckled. "Maybe that's because your looking at her like she's a dog in heat." Jeb gave his father a sharp look. Cain gave him a side-ways smile. Jeb sighed and hung his head, "Is it _that_ obvious?"

"That's an affirmative." Jeb sighed and brought his knees into his chest where he hugged them. "She's sort of my hero."

"You could have fooled me." Jeb glared at his father, who just smiled in return. Aris stood and walked over to the two against the wall. "Would you mind pointing me in the direction of our horses?" Jeb jumped to his feet.

"I'll take you there personally!" He told her grinning; Cain rolled his eyes.

"Your son seems very…nice." Aris said quietly, in a gruff tone. They were riding on through the forest again. Central City had just come into view and it was the first time she had actually spoken to him since the day before. "He's a good kid." Cain replied, "His mother brought him up well." Aris pushed back her cowl and looked at him sideways. "I'm supprised you don't feel you helped in his upbringing. He has allot of you in him." Cain's gaze dropped to the nape of his horses neck. "I didn't play any part in his life for a long time." Aris stayed quiet for a long time. Then she said quietly "I haven't seen or spoken to my father in a long time. I don't even know if he's alive or not." Cain looked across at her, her eyes clouded by old memories. "Not knowing is worse than having a body to mourn over." She told him looking up to meet his gaze and flashed a tired smile.

A high pitched whistle went up from behind them. Cain swivelled in his saddle while Aris tugged her horse to an about-turn, she had to urge the beast to go closer to the pale girl who was making the inhuman noise. Aris and Sali cooed and purred quiet words of comfort to the girl, but the girl continued to emit the noise, her eyes rolled back in her head, she kept grunted and pointed harshly at the ground. Cain looked down to where she pointed, he was about to look back to Aris when something caught his eye. He slipped from the saddle slowly, frowning. Aris's attention snapped from the girl directly to Cain, she watched silently as he knelt on the mulch of the forests floor. "What is it?" She asked him in hushed tones, as he stood, holding something in his hand.

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End file.
